Traditionally electronic switches have been unable to switch high-energy loads effectively resulting in damage to the switch, the capacitor, and the devices to which power is being provided. Effective resolution of this problem has been too costly and, without a switch that could effectively switch high-energy capacitors in and out of a circuit, the state of the art has been unable to provide suitable avenues of controlling the power imbalance issues and other related problems. The state of the art today, and for the past several decades, has been to use switch circuits that require a certain amount of current to bias their base and this current is typically used to induce the line voltage. Consequently, it was impossible not to cause damage to switches, capacitors and even motors simply because there was no way to effectively switch capacitance in and out of high power circuits in such a way to efficiently resolve imbalance and harmonics issues.
Currently there are no high-energy power line capacitor switching systems that match the voltage across a capacitor to the line voltage at the time the switch contact is made. In addition, there is no practical way that a capacitor can be discharged rapidly so that it can to switched on and rapidly charged, or that guarantees that the capacitor is kept in its discharge state in the event of a power loss.
The ever-increasing demand for electrical energy has triggered greater efforts to attain higher efficiency in every aspect of energy switching in the electrical power industry. Many providers and regulators have sought to address the ever-increasing demand and rising cost by looking at power factor correction (reactive power) and more importantly, load imbalance correction and harmonic distortion remedies. As we have experienced there have been many efforts to increase efficiency, reduce power consumption, and mitigate power delivery costs but these efforts have not effectively addressed the growing problem described above.
Thus, there is a need in the art for a novel, high-energy switching circuit that reduces energy consumption by high power loads.